A recent online research study indicating that Internet Explorer users have lower IQs than other browser users was likely bollox.
In other words, it's no different than any other online research study.
Last week, myriad news outlets – including the BBC, CNN, Forbes, The Telegraph, and, yes, The Register – reported on a survey …

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Just because it's a hoax-

Indeed,,

It may or may not be a hoax, but what's it's suggesting is legitimate, that stupid people don't bother looking any further than the web browser than comes with their OS, despite far superior alternatives (Opera, Chrome) being available for free.

The difference of course...

is that Opera did not feel the need to release PR statements and promotional campaigns off the back of it.. Had the survey shown that IE users were the smartest, Microsoft would be doing exactly that.. (Although in all liklihood, Microsoft would have just paid for the report in the first place, like the NSS Labs browser security "report")...

Is THIS story a hoax?

I mean, I've already been taken in once. Seriously, am I to believe a story about a hoax might not be itself a hoax? OK, now I've got a recursive headache AND an overwhelming desire to use Internet Explorer. This is not good. Thanks a lot, Register.

but did more IE users believe it?

Doable

El Reg could simply determine browser type whenever a user clicked on a story to read it ... assuming that they're not doing this already. It would be an interesting (and marketable) snippet of information to know "which" users read which stories ...

Erm...

Indeed

True

Agreed - I'm not saying that ... but clicking on a story does indicate "interest" ... and that's what this episode shows us - that we like to read and propagate stories that tend to confirm our own beliefs and preconceptions.

If I'm trying to sell you something then I'm not interested in what you "believe" - I want to know what you're likely to open and read because that's where my advert needs to go.

Well, as a Firefox user...

Duped again...

Not surprising.

The problem with most "studies" is, of course, that they're not even remotely scientific. Especially most compter-y, internet-y, IT security-y type "research". It really doesn't matter if it's big corp funded astroturfing or --the IT security fave*-- FUDmongering.

It's all shoddy and no journo knows enough about scientific method or basic statistics (averages without standard deviations come to mind) to know the difference from the real thing, unless it bit them in the arse somehow. So it does. Then again, recently some medico got published a paper apparently reinventing basic calculus, naming it after himself. And so it goes.

All journos & most people

believe that "Statistics == Data" with zero analysis except using "commonsense" interpretation which is nearly always wrong for data of any complexity. The furthest they ever go, as you say, is the arithmetic mean, definitely with no mention of Std.Dev. regardless of how suitable the data is. Probably the wrong average anyway, I would think modal or median values would be nearer to what Mr Average expects, as they don't realise how freak values can throw the mean off. Significance is what people really want to know - "does this mattter or not? Is it true?" are the questions they're asking, and you can't judge that by just "looking" at the fucking data.

@carpetkisser

> Significance is what people really want to know - "does this mattter or not? Is it true?" are

> the questions they're asking, and you can't judge that by just "looking" at the fucking data.

In this case, looking at the data was just fine. Look at the second graph - of the 10 traces, maybe 5 of them are absolutely monotonic. The chances of that happening in a real study have got to be very close to zero. Any the guy the BBC got to comment on the story pointed out, more or less, that people with an IQ of 80 probably couldn't use a browser anyway. And the authors admitted their bias in the last paragraph of the Reg story.

Anyway, who cares? It was a great story. Almost all the users of my stats website are on IE7. I sent them the story, but they didn't bite... :(

It does raise the issue...

... how much of the news we get is actually true, and how much is regurgitated bullshit? Given how must news is just re-titled and slightly edited copypasta from press releases - especially government and NGO press releases - it's hard not to believe that there's very little actually done by journalists these days, *except* swallowing and regurgitating bullshit.

Churnalism

"News stories" come primarily from two sources: news wire services (PA, AP, Reuters) and PR. Very few organisations can afford to do original reporting, or even bother to check the stuff they are fed. They are either rushing to be the first to carry the story, or saying "it's been put out by X so that's my independent verification".

It's simpler to always assume that a research organisation you haven't heard of before is a PR outfit, and their "studies" are worthless. Makes reading newspapers much quicker too, as you read a couple of lines of each article and think "newswire, newswire, PR, newswire, PR...".

We never get accurate news

TV, newspapers, radio, the Internet ; they're all just channels for miss-information to distract us from what's really going on. Namely the slow and inexorable take-over of the world by the Lizard People!

Mark my words. We'll all soon be speaking in hisses and eating rodents and insects. Ignore the warnings of David Icke at your peril!

Re: Churnalism

That's so quaint and old skool.

These days it's spot something said on Tw@tter and pad it with background fluff from the Wobblypedia. Or get a PR and pad it with background fluff from the Wobblypedia.

Or, if you're really desperate for copy and El Vino's is calling, trawl the news wires, find something and pad it with background fluff from the Wobblypedia. Trouble here is that trawling the news wires is too much like hard work these days.....

No hoax

It was an IQ test. Just not an IQ test for browser users, but for news sites failing to check the source of their material, and actually reading the news itself first: I mean come on, if you just start reading at the conclusion (which I always do), and you read some opinionated piece which is completely irrelevant to the fact that they are trying to prove you already know that you don't have to read the article.. (would have saved you time, and also face).

Its official: reporters are lazy nits....

Nothing new here.. Normally reporters or news agencies do background checks of stories, but due to time / money / energy 'restraints' these checks are usually skipped. Not even a quick check as to how long a certain "research institute" actually exists (which would take what.... 5 - 10 minutes?).

This is why it has become /very/ important to always remain skeptical of news when it arrives, no matter which agency has published it. Just because the agency may look creditable doesn't mean the story (or its origin) is. And unfortunately it also doesn't imply that the legitimacy of said story is also real.

As said; nothing new. 2 years ago in Belgium, just before / during the elections a group of television producers ('Neveneffecten') started a virtual "research agency" and started sending off totally bogus "researches". One of those ("Women take 3 seconds longer to decide on their vote than man") even made the first page on several national newspapers.

Even though the story itself was totally fictional and made up. All it took was a nice company name, an honest looking website and a big dose of fantasy.

As said this is no different. Several agencies picked up this story without any background checks. Shame on you.

And I dare write all this up because I've been cynical of said article right from the start. Which, ironically enough, even got me some down votes ;-)

The BBC

Funny how they were slow to publish the original story (publishing almost a week after everyone else) but one of the first - if not the first - to publish the hoax/retraction and immediately pulling the original story... methinks their friends at Microsoft might have tipped them off (ie. told them to do it).

Conspiracy, man

Why is EVERYTHING a f*cking conspiracy to some people? Jesus H Christ.

/this comment was written by a Microsoft/Monsanto/CIA shill to spread doubt about the shadowy world where everything that ever happens is decided by meetings between people who own/run the world as part of a grand masterplan to take over the world

C'mon Steve...

BBC

If you had looked properly at the results giving IE users an AVERAGE IQ of roughly 80 you would have seen something was amiss. As the fella on the BBC article stated, anyone with an IQ of 80 would not be using a computer and as the AVERAGE (note the caps) was 80 and the AVERAGE IQ is 100 (country dependant that) then you must have a ton of people of around 60 IQ to even out the average 100 IQ.

That's the simple way, you of course have people who are way above average IQ who use IE so really, how on Earth could you fall for such a hoax unless you wanted it to be true in the first place and so really you've just called every single reader of your website who uses IE an idiot, not only that, you compound calling them an idiot by calling them an idiot again over your usage of the hoax in your article, was it 30% of your readers who use IE?

It was so probable

It seems to me the reason why so many publications and their readers were taken in by this hoax was that it rang completely true. So yes, all the media outlets who fell for this should be ashamed at their fact checking abilities, but let's not beat up on them for believing that the study probably was real.

Beating up on them

Yes we absolutely *should* beat up on them for believing it was real. It's not the job of journalists to tell us what might fit with our pre-conceptions, it's their job to evaluate material, check and verify on it, and then create a story from it. ANY study from a non-mainstream research organisation should be scrutinised before publication, not just slapped into an article and pushed out willy nilly.